Epilogue #2
Linyue also made it in towards the end of the party—whether it was because she was my manager or because she had a terrifying forceful stare that could expel anyone who tried to tell her no, that was anyone’s guess, but she found the two of us standing by the railing with a glittering Manhattan skyline beyond us, and she did something that I think she did every year or so just to make sure I was never too comfortable: she shook my hand.
“Good work today, Ms. Warrick. And congratulations.”
“Linyue, I’m sick of you,” I said lightly. “It’s been… practically all my life and you still shake my hand and call me Ms. Warrick.”
“Well, you can easily fix that,” she said. “A few thousand for a nice ring and you can be Mrs. Warrick.”
Julie cleared her throat hard, looking a little dizzy at the concept. I glowered at Linyue. “I don’t care if I’ve been married for twenty years, Mrs. Warrick is my mother. Don’t you dare.”
Linyue sighed irritably, turning to Julie. “Well, Ms. Branch? She’s hopeless. I’ll have to resort to asking you to marry her.”
Julie laughed awkwardly. “I think it kind of has to be a both-sides, consensual thing. Otherwise it’s got a different name. Kidnapping, I think?”
“Oh, will you take some initiative,” Linyue said without any actual harshness, despite her best efforts at a scowl. “Listen, I know you’re busy celebrating tonight—”
“Oh, god, Linyue, is this more work?” I said, and Linyue ignored me.
“—but on Monday we’ll have quite a bit to discuss, you and me and Ms. Adesina.”
“Have we gotten approval to move ahead?” Julie said, her eyes sharpening.
“Most likely. Thankfully, Cheng Shiyi is coming back to New York, so we’ll hopefully be able to sucker him into another partnership.”
I laughed, shaking my head. Poor Mr. Cheng didn’t realize how much Linyue talked about him like a dumb hunk of money.
Of course, it wasn’t like he was just being taken for a ride—the Jewel investment had paid off handsomely for him, as the project took off and got its roots all across the New York music scene.
It had all been a lucky break for us, too.
In the end, my father had to bring me on directly to talk about how to work with him, because he’d been softened up a little on already making an exciting, smaller investment that had paid off well, and he wound up backing Shiyun America fully.
The company wasn’t quite out of troubled waters yet, but Mr. Cheng’s help had gotten us through the worst of it, not just financially but in the currency of guanxi, his connections with the Shiyun parent company helping reestablish some legitimacy around the American branch.
It didn’t hurt that Mr. Cheng loved making speeches at Jewel company events.
As far as I understood, he and Krysten had formed a kind of unusual but close friendship, and he’d bragged about taking English classes to improve his public speaking specifically for the New York market.
I could tell from his delivery that Krysten had also been helping him practice his English.
“Great,” Julie said. “I’ll be ready for it. Helena and I can probably coordinate with Estelle too and pretend we’re sneaking him off to another illicit rooftop party or something, you know how he loves it.”
“Ms. Fong can’t be trusted with anything,” Linyue said, even though I knew she was secretly soft for the woman, as evidenced by how she cracked. “But I suppose I can accept it as long as you two responsible adults are there.”
“Helena and who?” Julie said. I laughed, putting a hand to her back.
“Don’t worry, I’ve also tricked Linyue into thinking I’m a responsible adult.”
Linyue smiled. “On the contrary, you did no such thing. I meant Ms. Branch and Ms. Adesina.”
“Hey.” Julie folded her arms. “You can’t insult my girlfriend.”
“I will criticize your girlfriend more than I will criticize your wife. Take that as your incentive.”
“Oh, god, Linyue,” I groaned, a hand to my forehead. “I don’t need three parents pressuring me to get married!”
Linyue stood up taller, a half step back. “Which reminds me, your parents wish to see the two of you sometime this weekend. Your mother wants to have the four of you on a ski trip this winter and are looking to plan it. Hopefully your girlfriend won’t embarrass herself this time.”
Julie snorted, waving her off. “I got it this time. Don’t worry about it! Pizza, French fry. I’m on it.”
She gestured the ski shapes as she said it, only problem being that she got them backwards. Linyue stared at her a second longer before looking back at me. “Maybe she should stay in the chalet.”
“I’m good!” Julie said. I laughed, kissing the side of her head.
“It’s rough on everyone’s first time. We’ll just make sure you have some time with the instructor.”
“Did I get it wrong? French fry, pizza.” She tried again, saying them and gesturing them both in the opposite order, which put her right back at getting them wrong.
“I’ll talk to Mom and figure out a good time this weekend, then,” I said. “God knows Dad won’t know a time.”
Linyue nodded, stepping back all perfect efficiency. “Then I suppose I will see you there. Congratulations again. Onto the next one.”
“Well, don’t I feel celebrated,” I said dryly. Julie squeezed my arm lightly.
“Ah, you will tonight, that’s for sure.”
I grinned at her. “I know. Starting with… you’ve made me crave pizza.”
We got out of the afterparty before too much longer, and then finally I wasn’t an actor anymore, just a woman out with her partner, and sure enough, the driver was amenable.
It got some weird looks pulling up to a sketchy pizza parlor in a limousine dressed like Julie and I were, but the whole movie premiere, press event, afterparty, everything—all of it was nothing compared to the reception we got at Tasty Slice.
“Yo,” Tubman called to the back after looking like he’d just gotten the best news of his life. “Mrs. and Mrs. Julie are here!”
We got cheered and celebrated all the way up to the counter, where they tried to treat us to free pizza, but Julie argued with them, insisting on paying, and then she and I argued because I also insisted on paying, but she won out in the end.
She was comfortable herself these days, anyway—not only had she gotten on with Jewel right before they roughly doubled their market, but she was still working with some key figures in the music industry and agenting for a few stars, not least of which the one she’d promised me at a different rooftop party ages ago, Stephen Shale, who had sold mountains of records by now and yet still looked a little like a boy at a middle school recital when he came out on stage.
And Julie’s hopes turned out to be true, too, because Kingmaker was, indeed, in his forward base here.
But he spared nothing except a knowing nod across the room to us from his usual spot in the corner, sitting across from a girl who looked at him like he was speaking nonsense.
Julie laughed at it, shaking her head incredulously once we’d finished beating away our admirers behind the counter.
“Would you look at that,” she said. “Business is booming.”
“New client?”
“Looks like it. He’s been on a roll lately. I’m going to go interrupt.”
Well, of course she was. I looked back behind the counter, where Phil the tall guy who smelled like oregano so much I wouldn’t have been surprised if he just rubbed it in his clothes each morning, waved me off.
“You go with your girl, I’ll bring your pizza wherever you sit down.”
I caught up with Julie over at Kingmaker’s base, where he was just clapping Julie on the shoulder saying something about her outfit. He turned to me. “And how’s this, huh? Talk about the queen’s grace.”
The girl sitting across from him looked at us skeptically. “Um… you two are friends with this… Kingmaker man?”
“Julie, and this is my partner Helena.”
Kingmaker piped up. “Her hot supermodel girlfriend, as promised. Yo, Julie. You were off to a movie premiere, right? You went counting stacks in the back of a limo sipping champagne with your hot supermodel girlfriend?”
“Who goes around counting stacks?” Julie said. “I’m not making deals in cash, dude.”
He gestured to her. “Oh, the legal luxury life, you get her.”
The girl looked like she believed in Kingmaker approximately as much as Julie did. She turned back to him. “You hire actors to come in dressed up and pretend you got them into a movie premiere?”
“Hey,” Julie said. “You don’t recognize Helena Warrick? You can literally look it up, the premiere was today.”
“Darling, please, don’t embarrass me,” I sighed. The girl looked somehow even more skeptical, but Kingmaker beat her to it, pulling me up on his phone and showing her the pictures of me and Julie at the premiere just earlier.
“This the real deal. I don’t say success guaranteed for nothing, yo,” Kingmaker said, air-DJing again. The girl suddenly looked pale, looking confusedly between us and the picture.
“Don’t trust him,” I said lightly. “Julie got somewhere because she’s a genius. He tricked her into taking on a few thousand in debt at first to motivate her into working harder and told her to come up with a whole fake identity…”
“Hey—yo?” Kingmaker whirled on me. “Man, you can’t just go airing my trade secrets like that.”
The girl looked horrified. Julie beamed. “He is pretty good at motivating you, though. Just take it with a grain of salt. And make sure to ask for the price of services upfront if he recommends them. He’s not gonna cover shit. Did he try to charge you for the pizza here?”
“Hey, not cool,” Kingmaker said. “We’re making a deal. I ain’t cheaping out on her.”
“He offered to split the price,” the girl said. “Dollar fifty each.”
“Dude,” Julie sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “That’s worse than just charging her the full thing.”